ATLANTA — The legislative session that begins Monday will be quicker than any in recent years, and that will create a wave of changes that will ripple through Georgia.

When the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state for not allowing ample time for voters overseas with the military to get their ballots counted, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones’ decision last year created the tidal wave. He agreed with the DOJ that the primary runoff period wasn’t sufficiently long enough to get ballots from soldiers, sailors and airmen in time to be counted before the runoff voting begins.

There are places around the world where the police can whisk you off the street and make you disappear.

There are jails where you can be held without hope of anyone ever knowing. There are dark holes where you can be kept indefinitely, where you can remain an anonymous prisoner until a bureaucrat or judge decides your fate.

That is not the case in the United States. Certainly, mistakes and abuses happen, but those are the exception, not the rule.

My standards are out of whack and my rules are dumb. It took a teenager, my 16-year-old son, to raise awareness of these flaws in my construction.

I am indebted to my child. He has shed doubt on all that I hold to be inalienable truths of parenthood. He has opened my eyes to my shortcomings as a mother and a person. Without his voice of reason easing my bewilderment, I would be bereft of self-knowledge.

That seems like a silly question. The answer appears so obvious that it doesn’t deserve a response.

There are those, however, who are stumped when asked.

These are folks who have little to no understanding of military issues and have trouble grasping basic ideas, such as the purpose of having a standing armed force to protect the nation and its interests.

These are the same people who are pushing to integrate women into combat arms.

It’s been a week. How many of your New Year’s resolutions are still intact?

With the new year, people join fitness clubs, start diets, throw away their cigarettes and pour out the last of the hard stuff. But not right away. Our first sit-down meal of the New Year, at least at the Dickson house, had to be a big one with the traditional black-eyed peas, collards, some kind of hog meat and sweet potatoes.